


Beneath Twin Suns

by FictionPenned



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alex asked why we even have this lever, F/F, Spirited Away AU, basically the plot of spirited away, but like with Gallifrey, kind of
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-16
Updated: 2020-08-03
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:14:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24762163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FictionPenned/pseuds/FictionPenned
Summary: Still holding her newly injured wrist tight, Yasmin scrambles to her feet. She’s covered in grass and dust — red grass and orange dust — and for a moment, she tries to explain it away with logic — It’s sunset. You’ve hit your head. You’re seeing things — but logic isn’t strong enough to keep her rising fear at bay.She whirls around, desperately searching for the place from which she’d come, but there’s nothing, just a distant city edging up towards the horizon, comprised entirely of spires and towers and housed beneath a glass dome that seems straight out of a Stephen King book.“Ryan!” she cries for the last time, voice edging up towards a yell, and she takes a few steps forward, hoping against hope that she’ll step back into Sheffield and the world will right itself.Nothing changes.After a responding to a strange call for help, PC Yasmin Khan finds herself trapped on an unfamiliar planet called Gallifrey and drawn into intrigue with a mysterious person who calls herself the Valeyard.
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor/Yasmin Khan
Comments: 22
Kudos: 50





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [not_joli](https://archiveofourown.org/users/not_joli/gifts).



Yasmin Khan is often frustrated with her job, her family, and her life in general. When she was a child, everyone around her seemed to hype up adulthood with a single-minded intensity — planting dreams of perfect futures with perfect partners and perfect houses and perfect jobs — but reality has been nothing sort of disappointing. She may be nineteen, but she still feels like a child. She’s barely got a friend to her name, nonetheless a dating life, she still lives with her parents and her often-infuriating younger sister, and worst of all, she’s stuck writing tickets at work. She wanted to become a police officer in order to make a difference, but most days, she doesn’t feel like she’s doing anything at all. Her supervisor keeps telling her that things will improve once she’s off of probation, but probation feels utterly _endless_.

On this particular day, she’s the entire day mitigating pointless disputes, including a neighborly tiff over a parking spot that _hardly_ merited a call to law enforcement. She feels the last of her resolve dripping away with every wasted second, and by the time she declares the fight over and returned to the relatively sanctity of her own car, she is exhausted. It sinks into her bones and tightens its grip around her heart, and she tosses her hat aside and places a call to her supervisor.

“Everything good?” he asks, in the way of someone who expects the best but is still braced for the worse.

“Yeah, I just —“ she props her elbow on the car door and her head on her hand as she tries to find the most professional way to voice her complaint — “I feel like I can do more than this.”

His sigh is barely audible over the phone, a whisper of static against her ear. “I keep telling you, you have to master the basics.”

“Can we cover a different set of basics, then? Something that’ll test me? Mix things up a bit? I know there’s more to this job then old ladies and parking meters, and there’s no point pretending that there’s not.” Other probationary officers are taking more interesting calls, and yet, despite testing higher than most of them, she’s still stuck scraping the bottom of the barrel.

Sometimes she can’t help but think that someone in the department’s got a grudge against her. It wouldn’t be the first time. In school, Izzy Flint made it her life’s work to dismantle Yasmin’s confidence, kicking her out of social groups and ostracizing her in the classroom. Izzy Flint was more direct than whatever nonsense is blocking her from progressing and taking on more meaningful work, but when her mood gets grim, it’s hard not to compare the two.

“ _Mix things up a bit_ ,” her supervisor echoes, clicking his tongue against the back of his teeth as he considers the request. She can practically see him pulling his chair up to a monitor and scrolling down a list of reports, looking for something that serves both her agenda and his.

“There’s a call down south that just came in,” he reports after a momentary pause.

For a moment, Yasmin’s hope rises. She straightens, ready to hear the details, excited at the possibilities. “Hit me.”

“Fellow called in a portal in the park. Something about a rip in space and time and somebody disappearing.”

Her heart sinks. Of course they’d give her a prank call.

“You sure it isn’t a joke? Some kids having a laugh at a sleepover? Next thing you know they’re going to ask if you’re refrigerator’s running.” It’s a rather poor attempt at levity, and the words ring hollow in the suffocating air of the car.

“Someone’s got to check it out and you’re next on the list.” Yasmin swears she can hear the rush of air as his chair spins. “Just think of how much fun the report will be to write up. Not everyday you get a sci-fi novel thrown in your lap, is it?”

She barely hears the rest of the call, and hangs up at the first available opportunity, dismissively tossing the phone onto the passenger seat. She leans against the steering wheel for a good long moment, bracing her head in her hands and repeating reminders under her breath. “You’re just on probation. This happens to everybody. It’ll get better. I promise.”

Some days she wholeheartedly believes in these words and the sentiment behind them. Other days, they feel like nothing at all.

Today is a nothing-at-all kind of day.

But she takes a deep breath, checks her mirrors, and puts the car in gear. There may not be a way to take this call impressively, but there’s a hell of a lot of ways to mess it up, and she can’t afford to take any steps backward, no matter how brain-numbingly stupid she thinks this entire exercise is.

She finds the caller standing the park, right where he said he would be. What she doesn’t see, however, is a rip in space and time. Everything seems totally normal — normal trees, normal rocks, normal _dirt_. There’s nothing out of place in the slightest, aside from the man himself.

“You call about a portal?” she asks, doing her best to power through the absurdity of the question and maintain a certain semblance of professionalism. A shuffle of hands pulls a notebook out of her pocket, ready to take down the necessary notes — name, location, possible crimes committed.

“Yeah,” the man says, raising a hand to scratch the back of his head. Something about him seems familiar to her, like she’s seen him somewhere before, but she can’t seem to place the face. She _definitely_ can’t place the height — she feels like she takes notice of people that tall. “It’s just kind of buzzing in the air right about here. You can’t see it unless you squint, but I watched my granddad walk through it and disappear, right? And he hasn’t come back since.”

Yasmin huffs through her nose, flipping to a blank page. Missing grandads, she’d buy, but not in midair, and she definitely doesn’t hear any sort of buzz, unless you count the gnats. “Name?” she asks.

“My granddad’s or mine?”

“Let’s start with yours and then work our way to your granddad’s, yeah?” She can feel her control slipping, feel the anger and the tiredness snapping around the edges of her words. She bites the inside of her cheek to remind herself to follow the rules and do this according to procedures. Should be easy enough. Ten minutes and a few notes and it’ll be done.

The man shifts slightly, shoving his hands in the pocket of his jacket and rocking back on his heels nervously. “My name is Ryan Sinclair, and my granddad’s name is Graham O’Brien. Well, I say he’s my granddad, but he’s not really. My gran remarried about a year ago.”

Her head snaps up, confusion digging deep furrows into her brow. Not only does he look vaguely familiar, but the name’s familiar, too. It takes her a moment to place it. “Redland’s primary?” she asks hesitantly, dropping the practiced professional façade altogether.

The man, Ryan, leans forward excitedly, as if he, too, had been trying to pair a face with a memory. “Yeah.”

“Yasmin Khan,” she provides, filling the gap with a smile that feels out of place, given the circumstances. It’s a good thing she’s not under observation right now. She’d definitely be marked down for this.

“ _Oh my god_. Haven’t seen you in ages. Didn’t know you still existed.”

“I thought you moved or something. I mean, not that we were ever close, but you’d expect to run into a person if they’re still around.” Without thinking, she closes the notebook. This has to be a joke. Ryan wasn’t exactly a class clown in primary school, but he also doesn’t strike her as the sort of person to be seeing things that aren’t there. More the quiet type — concerned with himself and his work and making as few waves as possible.

“Nah, just changed schools, is all.” The thought trails off into a quiet pause, as though there’s something that Ryan isn’t quite ready to share, but he covers it with a quick question of his own. “So you’re a fed now?”

“We don’t call it that,” Yasmin corrects, ever conscious of the rules and guidelines that rule her vocation.

“Course you don’t.”

Awkwardness falls between them, and Yasmin hurries to fill it. “What about you? What are you doing?”

“Warehouse work, mostly.”

“Oh.” She can’t say that she’s not a bit disappointed. Doesn’t sound like the sort of job anyone wants. She’s read statistics in the news about how difficult warehouse work can be, and how it’s not a decent substitute for the jobs that it’s facing out of the sector. However, it feels a bit rude to bring up something that grim in a conversation like this one. “You like it?”

“Hate it,” Ryan says, eyes flitting ever so slightly skyward. “Saving up money. Want to be a mechanic.”

“That’s good, I guess.”

Her fingers tighten on the notebook in her hands as she reminds herself that the sun’s going down and her supervisor’s expecting an update on this call. “What are you doing making joke calls, then?”

“It’s not a joke,” Ryan pulls his hands out of his pocket and takes a step forward, reaching a single hand into the empty air of the clearing as if he’s searching for something.

Yaz sits back on her heel, raising an eyebrow. “C’mon, it’s _me_. It’s not like I’m a stranger, yeah? You can tell me if you’re just making stuff up.”

“I’m not, though,” Ryan insists. He takes a couple more cautious steps forward, and in an instant, his hand seems to disappear.

Yasmin blinks and shakes her head. It has to be a trick of the light. The sun’s going down, she’s getting tired, of course her eyes are susceptible to being a bit blurry.

“Ryan, you can’t do things like this,” she says. With a huff, she tucks her notebook back into her pocket and sets across the clearing with confident strides.

Alarm enters Ryan’s face as he looks over his shoulder at her. “I’d be careful if I were you. Like I said, my granddad disappeared. Haven’t seen him, haven’t heard him, dunno what’s on the other side of this thing.”

“There’s no _thing_ , Ryan.”

She steps past him, and in an instance, the world seems to change.

It feels like she’s falling, but the ground beneath her feet is firm. A gas leak, maybe, something that messes with the head. She’s felt like this before, coming off of anesthesia.

She turns, about to yell at Ryan for whatever mess he dragged her into, but her feet don’t move as well as they did a moment ago. Her toe drags, and she begins to tip forward. The air around her is thick as water, and a buzzing begins to fill her ears.

 _Power of suggestion_ , she reminds herself. _He told you that there was buzzing, so your brain’s decided to hear it. It’s not real_.

She barely gets her arms out in time to cushion the fall and keep from smashing her face in on the grass, but she feels something in her wrist pop. Just her luck, an injured wrist in the middle of a park with a gas leak.

She closes her eyes, waiting for the pain to hit her and for Ryan to come running over. The pain smashes through her, drawing tears to her eyes, but no one runs to help. No one asks if she’s okay. There’s just silence, and the faint rush of her pulse in her ears.

“Ryan?” she ventures after a moment’s pause.

There’s no answer. She rolls onto her back, wrapping the fingers of her opposite hand tightly around her damaged wrist in order to protect it from the movement.

Her eyes crack open and gaze up at an orange sky with twin suns.

For a moment, her pain is forgotten.

“Ryan?” she repeats, more frantically this time.

Again, there is no answer.

Still holding her newly injured wrist tight, she scrambles to her feet. She’s covered in grass and dust — red grass and orange dust — and for a moment, she tries to explain it away with logic — _It’s sunset. You’ve hit your head. You’re seeing things_ — but logic isn’t strong enough to keep her rising fear at bay.

She whirls around, desperately searching for the place from which she’d come, but there’s nothing, just a distant city edging up towards the horizon, comprised entirely of spires and towers and housed beneath a glass dome that seems straight out of a Stephen King book.

“Ryan!” she cries for the last time, voice edging up towards a yell, and she takes a few steps forward, hoping against hope that she’ll step back into Sheffield and the world will right itself.

Nothing changes.

The sky is still orange, the grass is still red, and twin suns still hang in the sky.

At a complete and utter loss of what to do, she plops down into the grass and waits. She’s not sure what she’s waiting for, exactly — drugs to wear off, Ryan to appear, someone to tell her than this is all a joke, all are very real possibilities — but the suns trace a strange path across the sky and a chill begins to set into the air and desperation rises.

“Okay, say this is real, then,” she proposes aloud, desperate to latch onto anything familiar, even if it’s just the sound of her own voice. “What do you do when you end up in an unfamiliar place?”

She doesn’t expect an answer, but she gets one anyway, from an unfamiliar voice somewhere behind her, dripping with untempered amusement.

“I’d say you’d start by asking a local for help, wouldn’t you?”


	2. Chapter 2

Yasmin whirls around, sharp gaze seeking out the source of the voice. She had been almost certain that there was no one else here — by the looks of things, the nearest buildings are miles upon miles away — and she doesn’t trust it. In her mind, the sort of person who hangs out at the exit points for strange portals in the middle of nowhere is the same sort of person who has something to do with the existence of those portals. She doesn’t know how or why or what would possibly compel someone to do something like that, but both her logic and her instincts tell her that it can’t be anything good.

Her eyes eventually settle on a man clothed in a ghastly combination of colors made even worse by the orange light of the suns. Purples and oranges and reds and brows fight against each other, clashing in a battle for dominance that they’re all doomed to lose, and on top of that, she doesn’t know how to begin to describe the style of that clothing. Eclectic, maybe, but that’s far from descriptive. Victorian, at a push, but something about it still strikes her as modern. If she passed someone wearing that ensemble on the street, she might assume that they’re a bit odd, but her mind wouldn’t automatically jump to time travel or historical reenactments. His dark hair looks a bit windblown which is unsurprising, given the weather. She probably looks to be a right mess, too, but his eyes burn with a quiet, unbalanced fury that she hopes will never grace her own face.

If this is a drug-induced delusion, it certainly _feels_ real.

To be honest, she isn’t quite sure if she buys the drug theory anymore, which leaves her with a pile of worst case scenarios.

“Didn’t know anyone was here,” she says warily, keeping her gaze locked on his and her muscles tense, just in case he proves her instincts right and turns into a threat.

“I wasn’t,” the stranger says with a sniff, as if it was the most obvious answer in the world. He props a closed fist on one hip, elbow jutting out at a sharp angle and weight listing to one side as he pulls out a pocket watch and checks the time. “Had a _thing_ , wound up running a bit late.”

“I don’t understand.” Yasmin’s mind races, trying to fill in the blanks and put the pieces together. She emerges with a number of theories, none of which are particularly comforting.

“Wouldn’t expect you to. Human minds are so narrow, aren’t they? I have a friend that fancies them, but she’s rather changed her tune recently. It’s about time reality sunk in.” The stranger snaps the pocket watch closed and tucks it away again.

Yasmin crosses her arms over her chest -- taking pains to support her sore wrist -- and takes a deep breath before she speaks. They’ve only exchanged a handful of sentences, and she already does not care for this man and his attitude, but it doesn’t do her any good to alienate him. She sorts through the hours of on-the-job training that were spent on dealing with difficult people and uses that knowledge to push emotion and fear aside and narrow her focus. For the moment, she shouldn’t worry about him. She has to keep her sights fixed upon the problem, and convince him to help. “Where am I?” she finally asks, voice steady and professional.

"Boring question," the oddly-dressed stranger says, dismissing the query with an idle wave of his hand. 

"But --" Yasmin starts to wrap her mouth around a protest, but he cuts her off before she has a chance to voice it, soldiering on as if she said nothing at all. 

"I have a better one." He hops atop the nearest rock, spreading his arms wide with a flourish, indicating the entire orange sky and the world beneath it. "Where do _you_ think we are?" 

The entire exchange feels rehearsed, as if he's performed it a million times before, and he gazes down at her expectantly, manic grin wide and bright and blinding. 

Yasmin refuses to play along. 

"Dunno," she says flatly. "It's why I asked, isn't it?"

The stranger allows his hands fall to his side, and his face falls along with them. “It’s no fun when you lot don’t play along.” He jumps off the rock and steps a bit closer to her, casting his eyes over first her face and then her uniform. “Didn’t mean to catch a cop. Was aiming for somebody else,” he grumbles, words spoken more to himself than to her. In fact, she wonders if he even realizes that he’s speaking at all. 

She says nothing, and in the next moment, a shrug rolls off his shoulders, and he straightens his back and claps his palms together. 

“No matter. You’re on the planet Gallifrey in the constellation of Kasterborous. No, you can’t go home, and no, I don’t suggest fretting about whether or not anyone will miss you. I’m sure they won’t. Now then, what’s your name?” He draws closer still, and he lifts a hand to his chin, fingers running thoughtfully through his short beard. 

Yasmin stands her ground. “What’s yours?” she asks.

Amusement curls his lips. “The Master.” 

“That’s not a name.” 

“We don’t do names the way you do names. Our system is far superior. Now, love, what’s your name?” he asks again. 

A memory stirs at the back of her mind — something about how some people in Ireland tell stories about how signing your name to a faerie means giving your life over to them. She’s never believed in faeries, but she never believed in teleportation or portals or whatever either, and here she is. Either way, it doesn’t seem completely wise to hand over any kind of personal information to someone who seems to be this unstable. 

“Why do you want to know?” she asks, hesitation evident. 

“Do humans not ask names when they meet each other?” 

“They do, but —“

He cuts her short with an idle and dismissive wave of his hand. “Name, please. I’m being terribly patient with you, and you don’t want to see me when I’m impatient.” 

Breath leaks her lungs in a slow trickle out her nose. “Yasmin.”

“Surname, too. I know you lot have those.” He’s in her space now, breathing her air, and she’s horribly, desperately uncomfortable. Under normal circumstances, she wouldn’t let anybody treat her like that. “Give me your proper name, and I’ll help you. You’re in a strange place, you need all the help you can get.”

“Yasmin Khan.” 

She resents every syllable. 

“Yasmin Khan,” the man who calls himself the Master says carefully, as if savoring every letter. He takes a step back, tilting his face towards the sky and posing a question to the air. “Yasmin Khan, did you get that?” 

The air does not answer, but Yasmin feels something in her mind shift. A moment ago, her name had been perched on the tip of her tongue, and now, there’s nothing there at all. She’s heard her name every day since she was born — written it at the top of worksheets, scribbled it on name tags, bubbled it in on test sheets — and though she still knows that she has one, there’s just a void where it used to be. 

Somehow, that’s more disturbing than being ripped out of Sheffield and thrown here, into the unknown. 

Panic rises in her throat as she presses against the edges of her mind, filtering through memories, scrambling for the last vestiges of the name that had once been hers but has since been stolen. 

For a brief second, she manages to wonder how one even steals a name, but the question is swept away by the rising tide of desperate fear. 

The Master’s gaze flits back to her, a pleased smirk spreading across his lips and mischievous, devious light shining in his eyes. “I’m going to call you Yaz, do you mind?” 

Yaz, that sounds familiar. She thinks she’s been called Yaz before, a long time ago. It’s not her name, not properly anyway, but it staunches the bleeding. She has an anchor, something to call herself, something to cling to, something to hang her identity on. It’s not a good fit, but it’s better than the few, agonizing moments in which she had been nameless. 

The Master rolls on without waiting for an answer. “Now Yaz, options for human employment on this planet are dreadfully limited, seeing as you are an invasive species, however, I can set you up with someone who can pull a few strings.”

Yaz narrows her eyes, and fights to regain some of her former steadiness as she says, “Did you just take my name, offer me a job, and frame that as a favor?” 

The Master tilts his head, regarding the air beside Yaz’s head. It doesn’t seem like anyone’s ever bothered to ask him that before, or that he was prepared for the question. “Hard to live without an income, isn’t it? You work, you get paid, you survive here for as long as your fragile little body lets you.” 

“I don’t understand.” 

“I believe you humans call it capitalism.” The Master’s hand fishes around in his pocket again, emerging with the pocket watch for a second time. “I can take you there safely; what you do after that is up to you.” 

“I don’t, I’m not —“ she fumbles for the right thought amidst a maelstrom of thoughts and emotions — “Why bring me here?”

Surprises raises his eyebrows. “I told you, I wasn’t aiming for you, but I’m not going to put you back, am I?”

“Why not?” she demands. 

Her fingers tighten into closed fists and she closes the distance between them. She’s much shorter than she is, but she thinks that she can hold her ground if this conversation happens to devolve into blows. She’s gotten involved in more uneven brawls before and won.

“You could be useful.”

“I have no plans to help you with _anything_. Let me go home.” She leans into every word with an intensity that suggests that it might very well be her last, however, the Master continues to look at her as if she’s nothing more than a gnat buzzing about his face. 

He doesn’t even bother to consider the possibility before dismissing it. “Can’t do it.” 

“Can’t or won’t?” she huffs, spoken in the same tone with which teachers say, ‘I don’t know, _can_ you?’ after a student asks if they can go to the loo. 

“Both. Mostly, I just don’t care.” He shakes his head and turns to her, fire in his eyes. “What will it be? Going to work or slowly dying of dehydration in these hills?” 

Yaz bites the inside of her cheek as she turns and casts her eyes towards that distant city. She knows that if this is real, she will never be able to return her on her home, and if it’s a drug-induced psychosis of some sort — a possibility that’s growing increasingly unlikely — then nothing she does will influence the speed at which it ends. Thus, she takes the option that would have the least consequences in the worst case scenario. “I’ll take the job, I guess.” 

“Excellent.”

The Master’s grin is horrifying, and she doesn’t bear to look at it for very long. 

“Now, if you don’t mind dropping the vest and hat here, that’d be lovely. Can’t have someone running about with alien clothes, that raises immediate red flags, and you don’t want to be brought to trial, do you?” 

“I’m not an alien,” Yaz says, confusion evident. 

“Here, you are. I suggest that you start telling people that you’re from the Drylands and have two hearts.”

“Two —“ Yaz starts, but he cuts her off again. 

“I don’t have the patience to explain basic biology to a human. You can ask someone else about that later, though I suggest picking someone that you’d trust with your life,” he says dryly. “Now, then, I left my ship around somewhere…”

Fighting the urge to snap back at him, Yaz takes a deep breath and shrugs off her bright yellow reflective vest, leaving both it and her hat behind a rock. After a moment of hesitation, she leaves her belt behind too, taking a moment to remove her mobile phone and slide it into her pocket with her good hand. She is plenty good at looking inconspicuous, especially if the standards she’s being judged by are the Master’s bombastic dress sense. 

She takes one look back at the pile of belongings before following behind him. 

She wonders if she’ll ever see them again, or if she has just shed the final vestiges of her previous life and left it behind forever.


	3. Chapter 3

In this place, travel works the same way that it does in a dream.

The stranger who calls himself the Master herds Yaz into a rock with a door that opens into a much larger space, and after a bit of bustle and an alarming amount of noise, the doors open on a busy street full of unusual people. Most of the people wear red, though every so often, there’s a flash of gold or a hint of orange that almost seems to fade into the background. Even though Yaz feels like an oddity, no one turns to look at her as the Master leads her around corners and down side-streets.

Once she is reasonably content that she is unobserved, Yaz cranes her neck upward to look at the orange sky. She can see the a glint of glass interrupting its great span, and she follows that reflection all the way down to a horizon that is almost entirely obscured by the buildings that soar up around them. Somehow, _some way_ , they had crossed the vast span of the hills and plains and emerged in the city that she gazed upon from a distance.

“Why is there a dome if there’s breathable air outside of it?” Yaz asks, jogging a couple steps in order to close the gap between them and hover at the Master’s shoulder as he walks.

The Master shrugs, visibly annoyed at the question. “Humans build walls around their cities, don’t they? We built a dome.”

“Isn’t that more expensive than a wall?”

“We do not often find expense to be an obstacle.”

It’s a purposefully cryptic statement, but Yaz chooses not to press him any further. She doesn’t want him to get so frustrated with her that he rescinds his offer to help her find a job. Her questions can wait until she has a reasonable sense of security, or as much of a reasonable sense of security as one can muster when she has been robbed of both her home and her name and her wrist continues to throb with the pain of her fall.

They don’t have to walk too terribly far before the Master stops in front of an imposing, gilded door with a strange crest etched upon it. He knocks once before turning the knob and pushing it open. The back of his hand keeps it from closing as he inclines his head, gesturing that Yaz should step past him. With a great degree of hesitation, she does.

It takes a moment for her eyes to adjust to the dim light of the room. There are no windows, and the only light emanates from a number of rainbow-colored orbs and lanterns that both cling to the walls and have been deeply set into the many recesses of the ceiling. Rows upon rows of chairs mark the approach to a series of desks, three of which are occupied by people who are dedicatedly and furiously scribbling away at bits of official-looking paper. The Master bypasses the rows of furniture with a nonchalance that suggests that he’s been here a thousand times before and raps on the surface of the furthest possible desk in order to get the attention of its occupant.

Four quick knocks, and the workers head turns upward, long brown hair falling away from a pale, tired, and surprisingly young face.

“I wasn’t expecting to see you,” the strange woman says in a voice that manages a slightly approximation of genuine pleasantry, but that Yaz recognizes as the tired front of a customer service representative doing their absolute best to make it through the day without complaint or incident.

“Wasn’t expecting to be here,” the Master says with a grin, leaning back on his heels and jauntily tucking a hand into one of his many pockets. “ _But_ I picked up another one. Same deal, traveler in need of a job until something better comes up. People these days are _terribly_ unprepared, aren’t they?”

Yaz’s eyes flick to him, absorbing every word and every movement, wondering how many times he’s had this conversation and how many times he’s camped out at the place where she appeared, waiting for someone to pass through. ‘ _I was aiming for somebody else_ ,’ he had said. She didn’t think much of it then, but now that her mind’s clearer, it seems awfully important. Is the Master bringing people here? And if he is, why would he lie about it? Why slip into offices and lobby on their behalfs once he’s kidnapped them? Why take her name? What good does any of that do?

Each question branches into a dozen more, and she doesn’t yet have the answers to any of them, nor does she dare to ask. They can wait until she knows a bit more, until she finds someone that she can trust.

“It would seem so,” the woman behind the desk replies with a remarkable amount of calculated diplomacy. Her gaze darts to Yaz and she rises out of her seat slightly, squinting to get a good look at her. “What do you call yourself?”

It’s an odd way to frame a commonplace question, but perhaps that is simply the culture. Perhaps no one here has names. Perhaps they merely operate on a system of poorly considered titles. “Yaz,” she says after a moment’s thought.

“Nice to meet you, Yaz. I’m Kira.” Kira’s attention returns to the papers on her desk as she begins to shuffle through them, scanning them quickly before setting them aside, as if searching for something in particular. “I handle the job assignments in this sector. Or, _well_ , I handle some of them. Nothing high-level or ranking, but you know what they say, every job is vital to keeping the city running.”

Yaz nods. Though this place might not be familiar, that philosophy is. It was stamped at the top of every page of job aptitude test results in school with the intention of softening the blow for anyone who might’ve been told that they would be happiest as a paper pusher or something. She never minded her test results. Almost all of them had aligned with a strict moral code and a strong sense of justice and thrown her exactly where she wound up in the end.

For a passing second, her mind wanders back towards her uniform, abandoned on a meaningless rock in an orange-tainted red wasteland. At the moment, it seems unlikely that she’ll ever get to wear it again.

“What are you good at?” Kira asks suddenly, pulling Yaz’s attention free from the downward spiral of fear and concern.

“Um…” Yaz starts, pursing her lips as she tries to think of things that wouldn’t reveal her as someone who doesn’t belong here. “I like working with people, I guess — like sorting out their problems and such. I’d rather be on my feet than be sitting in a chair all day. I’ve got a reasonably good head for memorizing things.”

She can feel the Master’s eyes on her, but she doesn’t dare to look at him. She’s nervous enough as it is — she doesn’t need another unhelpful shove from him.

“Let’s see,” Kira says thoughtfully as she continues to shuffle through options. “There’s a position at the baths available.”

“Probably not the best idea,” the Master interjects at great speed.

Curiosity lifts Yaz’s brows, but she says nothing, just files it away among all of the other strange things that have happened today.

“Can you translate Old High Gallifreyan?”

Yaz understands most of those words in isolation, but together, she hasn’t the faintest idea what they mean, so she offers up a hesitant, questioning, “No?”

“Something easy, if you would,” the Master says. His hand leaves his pocket and finds the surface of the desk, only to shift again a moment later. Yaz doesn’t know if that means that he’s bothered or impatient or simply incapable of staying still for too long.

“There’s —“

The offer is cut short as the front door opens, flooding the room with orange light so bright that Yaz is temporarily blinded. She turns toward it, frantically blinking as she tries to make out the source of the disturbance, mind automatically turning towards the worst. _This is it. They’ve figured out that I’m not supposed to be here_.

“Wouldn’t’ve thought I’d see you here, love,” the Master says with a theatrical brightness that runs quite at odds with the insistence that had so thoroughly permeated his words a moment ago.

The door closes again, plunging the space once more into dusky, lantern-lit, multicolored dimness.

It’s another few moments before Yaz can finally see the visitor. She’s blonde, taller than Yaz but not _properly_ tall, and though her face seems kind, her clothes are austere. A fitted black jacket hugs her slight frame and hides her neck beneath a small, squared collar. The silver of buttons gleams at every closure, and a pattern of interlocking, twisting circles marks a pattern at her breastbone. Her trousers, too, are the same unforgiving shade of black, and her shoes barely make a noise against the polished floor as she works her way across the room.

She seems oddly familiar in the way that people you’ve passed in the hallway at school but have never spoken to seem familiar, but given the circumstances, Yaz doubts that they’ve ever met.

The strange woman’s gaze hardly seems to register Yaz as she draws closer, instead focusing on the Master with laser-like precision. Yaz doesn’t mind. It gives her a chance to further scrutinize her face without seeming invasive.

“Wasn’t there a meeting of the High Council you were supposed to be at?” the stranger asks, voice naturally bright but subtly firm. “Surely they would have noticed that you weren’t there.”

The Master shrugs, “You know me. I’m as bad at sitting through meetings as you are. Always get a bit of an itch between my shoulder blades whenever certain people start talking.”

The strange woman allows this statement to pass without comment, and instead turns her attention to Kira, who smiles brightly up at her in return. To Yaz, it looks to be a real smile this time, not the front that she had used when addressing the Master. “Always love it when you drop by. What can I do for you today?”

“That job posting that I gave you the other day, has anyone replied? Been a bit out of luck in my own efforts. Feels like everyone’s been busy lately.” The sentences pour out at a pace that suggests that the woman doesn’t think before she talks, words and thoughts bumping up against each other on their way into the world. “Really can’t scrape by much longer without a bit of help. Getting a bit desperate, really? Does it show? Do I look desperate?”

Yaz doesn’t think the woman looks desperate at all, but she doesn’t feel qualified to judge anything or anyone in this strange city.

“Not yet,” Kira says, “But I do have a person here that I’ve been trying to place in a job.”

“Oh, brilliant.” The blonde whirls around, looking at Yaz as if she’s only just managed to notice her for the first time, eyes sweeping over her in a way that compels Yaz to whip out a nervous smile and shift her weight from one foot to the other. “Do you want my job?”

A ghost of uncertain laughter barely skates past Yaz’s lips before dying out in midair. “I don’t know what it is.”

“And I don’t know who you are. A match made in heaven, isn’t it?” The statement feels like a joke, but it’s spoken with such earnestness that Yaz doesn’t doubt that the woman means it with all sincerity.

“It’s an assistant position, mostly,” Kira supplies helpfully, leaning forward and looking between the pair of them. “Errands, counsel, odd tasks, that sort of thing.”

“I don’t —“ the Master begins to interject, but his interruption only manages to spur Yaz forward. He may have helped her get here, but she doesn’t trust him, not really. He seems a bit dodgy, insofar as strange people go, and though Yaz has little to go on, she’d much rather cast her fate with someone who’s afraid of looking desperate than someone who actually is.

“I’ll take it,” she declares, putting a hand forward for the strange woman to shake, expecting to seal the deal.

The blonde merely stares at the extended hand for a long moment, countless unspoken thoughts scribed across her face. Yaz feels her heart begin to sink. Perhaps she had done the wrong thing, placed her faith in the wrong person. Perhaps this is just another rejection in a long string of rejections, but after a moment, the woman replies, “Good. Do you have a place to live or do you need one, I keep a spare room.”

Embarrassed by both her momentary panic and the lack of reciprocity, Yaz lowers her hand.

The Master groans, but both Yaz and her new employer ignore him.

“A spare room would be great,” Yaz says brightly. “I’m Yaz, by the way.”

“ _Yaz_ …” the blonde speaks her name so deliberately that it seems as though she’s almost trying to taste it on the tip of her tongue.

“And you are?” Yaz asks, seeking to find at least one answer to the ever-increasing questions cycling through her mind.

“I’m the Valeyard.”


	4. Chapter 4

As they wind their way through the shaded, narrow streets of the city, Yaz has to jog in order to keep pace with the Valeyard’s steps. With every second, she can feel herself running increasingly short on air and every step jostles her sore wrist, but she does her best to hide her discomfort. The Master told her to pretend that she hails from a place called the Drylands and that she has two hearts. Two hearts would mean that she’d be extra good at cardio, right?

“What does it mean? The Valeyard?” Yaz asks after a couple blocks. It’s a bit late, insofar as questions go, but it’s probably better to ask now than to never ask at all.

The blonde glances over at Yaz, slight amusement situating itself at the corners of her mouth. “It’s an archaic word for court prosecutor. It’s fallen somewhat out of fashion these days. I’m the only one who uses it.”

“Is that what you do?” Yaz’s words are slightly ragged, bumping up against the edge of her breaths. Maybe she shouldn’t be talking. Maybe she should have waited to ask questions until they made it to wherever they’re going. Maybe this will be the moment that she is exposed and cast out of a society that she never asked to join.

Normally she’s good at keeping her fear under wraps and shoving it aside to focus on whatever task sits at hand, but she’s more overwhelmed than she’s ever been. She’s a kid who has just lost her mum in the grocery store for the first time, except the grocery store suddenly transformed into a strange city in the middle of nowhere with no front counter to get to for salvation and no PA system with which to make an announcement that will reunite a mother with her lost child. 

There’s just figuring out how to survive with strange company in an even stranger place.

“In a way.”

Yaz catches the Valeyard looking over at her as she responds, interest evident in the way that green eyes flick across her face and down her body, and Yaz looks away in turn. Knowing that she is being scrutinized only serves to intensify her fear, and if she can turn a blind eye to it, then perhaps that will help her calm down enough to allow her to keep her head.

Even though she feels like she ought to say something else, to ask another question or clarify the duties that are required as an assistant to someone who is a court prosecutor _in a way_ , she merely nods and bites the inside of her cheek, putting her chin down and soldiering on as she attempts to keep pace with her new employer.

To her credit, the Valeyard does not press Yaz’s silence into more questions and answers that would rob her of valuable breath and put her more at risk.

It is one small thing to be grateful for in this new world full of things that terrify her.

It doesn’t take them much longer to reach their intended destination.

The Valeyard holds the door for Yaz, and insists on taking the stairs because she “doesn’t like waiting for the elevator.”

Yaz stifles a groan, but follows along just as she had in the streets, ignoring the desperation that lines her lungs as she fights to keep her breathing even and hide her single heart.

The front door to the Valeyard’s living quarters isn’t locked — she merely turns the knob and strides straight inside — and when Yaz inquires about that, she laughs. “It’s tuned to my biology. I can get yours added if you plan on going in and out on your own, but I wouldn’t recommend it.”

“Why?” Yaz dares to ask as she steps inside the front room and look around. It’s a remarkably austere place. Yaz’s family has always filled their flat with memories — art and knick-knacks and pictures that spark joy and speak to both to their history and their present. It always smells like her dad’s terrible attempts at pakora and sounds like Sonya’s music being played too loudly in her headphones. This space, however, has absolutely no personal touches. There’s a table and a couple of chairs — white and marked with a twisting sigil that is unfamiliar to her. On either side of the room, there are closed doors that lead elsewhere. Even the curtains are drawn tightly shut, barring sunlight from entering. It seems a dreadful place to live, and Yaaz suddenly regrets her decision to accept both this job and this housing.

She can only hope that the other rooms contain more life, and that perhaps she will slowly be allowed to accumulate things. Though she will never be able to find things from her actual home, perhaps she can find things here that spark the same kind of warmth. A place this busy has to have a market, and if this is a job, then she’s bound to be paid.

By the time the Valeyard answers her question, Yaz has almost forgotten that she’s asked it.

“You’re not from here,” the blonde remarks as she sinks into one of the two chairs, crossing one leg over the other and looking up at Yaz with an unsettling degree of curiosity. She notes it easily, as if remarking on something as simple as the weather, rather than making an accusation that might very well be strong enough to end Yaz’s life here before it has a chance to begin.

The Master did not bother to tell her what would happen if she was found out, but given the lengths to which he went to hand her a convincing story and hide her in a decent job, Yaz can only assume that nothing good comes in the wake of exposure. Her mouth goes suddenly dry, and at a loss for useful knowledge about this place and the person before her, she falls back upon the story that the Master supplied to her. “I’m from the Dry —“

“He tells everyone to say that. You’re not from this planet, are you?” A grin splits the Valeyard’s face as she cuts the claim short. It’s an incredibly difficult expression to read, and Yaz doesn’t know whether warmth or malevolence lurks within it, or even what smiling means in this place and this culture. Once, in biology class, a teacher told them that humans were an exception to the rule by expressing joy through the baring of teeth. Among most creatures, smiling is an act of aggression. _Look how many teeth I can bite you with_.

“I told you, I’m —“

The Valeyard waves the words away with a sweep of her hand through the empty air, and idly turns in her seat, opening a drawer sequestered beneath the table that dominates the room. For a moment, Yaz is horribly, terribly afraid of what might be stored in it, but the Valeyard’s hands emerge with only a pair of black gloves. She tugs one onto her right hand, flexing her fingers to test the fit before tossing the other onto the surface of the table. Once that’s done, she crosses her arms over her chest and settles back in her chair, clearly awaiting Yaz’s truth.

Yaz swallows, weighing possible answers.

How dangerous would it be to try another lie? Does she even know enough about this place and the person before her to craft a convincing story? And alternatively, what will happen to her if she tells the truth?

She locks eyes with the Valeyard, who merely offers a slight nod in return.

It isn’t much in the way of either direction or encouragement, but Yaz takes a deep breath and says the unthinkable. “I’m from a different planet, I think. Or a different dimension. Maybe a different time? It’s not very clear, actually, I probably should’ve asked but I didn’t think —“ she pauses in search of more air to fill her lungs and provide support for the truth. “I didn’t mean to get here. Apparently I fell through by accident.”

“Are you human?” the Valeyard asks, uncrossing her arms and leaning forward ever-so-slightly. There’s a glimmer in her eyes that wasn’t there before, strikingly at odds with the plainness of the home that she occupies and the severity of the clothes that she wears. “He usually brings humans through. I’ve chatted with some of them. Delightful company. Very few of them seem to like me.”

Yaz can emphasize with that. If they were as afraid of being found out as she was, it can’t have been pleasant to have suddenly been bombarded with questions and accusations from a black-clad court official who somehow senses that you’re somewhere you are not meant to be. “Yeah. Guessing you’re not?”

It’s a rude thing to ask, probably, but that thought occurs to Yaz too late to stop the question.

The Valeyard’s lips tighten. “No. I’m not.”

“What are you, then?” Yaz says, deliberately pressing her luck. If the first question wasn’t too rude to answer, then perhaps this one won’t be either, and she could use a bit more information to go off of if she’s going to try to survive in this place.

Gloved and ungloved fingers steeple as the Valeyard braces her elbows against her thighs. “I’m a Time Lord. You’re on Gallifrey in the constellation of Kasterborous. Does any of that mean anything to you?”

A bark of laughter leaves Yaz’s lungs. She’s not laughing at the Valeyard, exactly, just at the fact that the name of a planet and a constellation that she’s pretty sure don’t exist in _any_ books in _any_ library means anything to anybody. “Should it?”

“Probably not,” the Valeyard admits after a moment of contemplation. “The universe is vast, and most societies wouldn’t be able to chronicle all of it if they tried, nonetheless travel across it. My people do, of course, but we are the exceptions in that regard, not the rule.”

It’s an enormously pretentious thing to say, and Yaz has half a mind to say so, but she bites her tongue. After all, she’s probably already treading in dangerous territory. She doesn’t want to lose this job or this place to stay, however awful it may seem. “I guess. Didn’t even know there was intelligent life out there. Always thought it was a bit of wishful thinking.”

The Valeyard doesn’t respond directly to the statement. Instead, she circles back around to where they started. “Do you want to know how I knew you weren’t from here?”

Yaz nods.

The Time Lord holds out a hand and beckons Yaz forward.

After a moment of hesitation, Yaz obliges.

Once she’s within range, the Valeyard reaches for Yaz’s injured first with her gloved hand, gently guiding it towards her so that she might be able to take a closer look. Yaz grits her teeth against the pain as it ricochets up her arm. When she first fell, she hoped she just sprained it, but now, looking at the swelling and feeling the severity of the pain for the first time, she is forced to confront the fact that it’s probably broken. It will take weeks to heal. One of the other probationary officers in her class had broken a foot three months ago, and he’s still confined to a desk, and that’s _after_ seeing two surgeons and three other doctors.

Yaz doesn’t even know where to find medical care here, or if she even _should_ , since the Valeyard advised her against programming the door to her biological code. If all of the people here have two hearts, then she’ll be discovered as soon as someone takes her vitals and checks her pulse.

The Valeyard rotates Yaz’s arm to examine the other side, and no amount of cheek-biting can stifle the yelp of pain that rises in her throat.

 _Yep, it’s definitely broken_.

The Valeyard looks up at Yaz’s face again, and there’s something sad in those eyes, something deeply empathetic, something that speaks to decades of grief beyond her apparent age. “Different biology means different injury responses. Tell-tale sign someone doesn’t belong where they are.”

Yaz heart sinks and a bitter taste spreads across her tongue. She can’t exactly hide an injury she already has, especially one that’s this noticeable. She’s about to say as much when the Valeyard speaks again.

“This isn’t going to hurt a bit,” the Time Lord says, and even before she does anything, Yaz _knows_ that it’s a lie.

The tips of the fingers on the Valeyard’s bare hand come to rest on Yaz’s swollen skin — the touch both surprisingly warm and feather-light.

For a moment, Yaz thinks that she might grasp either side of the break in her hands and set it, but instead, there’s a faint glow of golden energy that gleams in the air around the stranger’s skin. She blinks once, assuming that it’s a trick of the light, but when it passes from the Valeyard’s skin into her own, she suddenly feels as though she’s stuck her hand into an open flame.

It feels like losing her arm and growing a new one all at once, and her very blood seems to boil beneath her skin.

She tries to recoil, but the Valeyard’s grip tightens, holding her fast. Whatever a Time Lord is, they’re stronger than humans. Yaz is pretty athletic insofar as humans go — she had to be to pass the entrance physicals for her job — but the Valeyard could probably squash her at a moment’s notice.

It’s unsettling and only serves to deepen the fear that rises alongside the physical pain, but just as quickly as the hurt arose, it fades back into nothingness, and the Valeyard lets her go.

Yaz pedals backward so quickly that she almost falls again, and as soon as she has put a bit of space between them, she raises her hand to look at it. It’s just as good as it’s always been, with no sign of the break. There’s a scar that’s disappeared from the back of her hand that she got while trying to hop a fence in primary school, too. Even when she squints and holds her hand up to the light, she can’t see any sign of it. Her fingers all work, though, when she tests them by curling her hands into a fist, and she thinks all of her nerve endings are intact.

“What did you do?” she asks, looking up at the blonde with shock etched across her face.

The Valeyard peels off the glove and it joins its mate on the table. “I kept you from being discovered. I don’t suggest making a habit of it.”

“But what was it? How did you do _that_?” 

That inscrutable grin rises to the surface again as the Valeyard impishly taps the side of her nose. “Trade secret. You're _very_ welcome, by the way."   
  
Yaz manages to stop gaping long enough to summon up gratitude. "Thank you."  
  
The smile deepens, and for the first time, Yaz thinks that she manages to glimpse something truly genuine within it. 


End file.
